128 MISSOURI AGRICULTURAL REJ^mx. 



THE BEST APPLICATION OF OUR ROAD LAWS. 

 (By Col. G. W. Waters, Canton, Mo.) 



I want to say a word or two about this drag^ging of the roads about 

 which Mr. King has spoken. The county which has perhaps the greatest 

 mileage of dragging on its roads is Caldwell. I was in the shops where 

 they made these drags and there were over fifty in use in Caldwell 

 County and the results stated by Mr. King are fully verified there. They 

 have been using this method for over seven years. In Daviess County, 

 Jas. Tuggle, near Gallatin and William Wood in Ralls County have been 

 using this method for a number of years and what Mr. King has said is 

 fully verified. I believe he said one thing which ought to be fully empha- 

 sized, "you will not believe the full force of the value of this method of 

 keeping up the road until you have seen and tried it," I do not want to 

 detract one iota from the argument Mr. King has made, but if no other 

 thought was emphasized than this, the value of the continuous care of the 

 roads in this way, it would certainly be of inestimable value. Having seen 

 this method of work, I was thoroughly impressed with it, and after I had 

 stood upon Mr. King's road and had seen that he had worked it out to a 

 finish better than any other one single place I had seen, I uttered there, 

 upon that ground, the statement that "if all the supervisors and road over- 

 seers in the State of Missouri could stand there and look over that road 

 which was in full view and appreciate the value of Mr. King's method and 

 be impressed with it, that it would be worth to the State of Missouri one 

 hundred thousand dollars a year in the maintenance of their public high- 

 ways." I said it then and I have no reason to doubt the truthfulness of 

 that statement now. 



The topic that has been assigned me is the "Application of our road 

 laws to the road maintenance." It occurs to me this way, gentlemen, 

 that we ought to inquire into our laws and see if we have laws that are 

 anyways near suitable for the purposes for which they were framed. If 

 we have, then we ought to proceed under the laws, because so long as we 

 are dissatisfied with our laws we will not make progress under them. 

 So long as we are looking out in some direction for something that will 

 make us better roads than what we have, we will not go to work under our 

 present conditions. You take the farmer who feels way down in his heart 

 that he is living where conditions are not favorable and wants to get away 

 from there to a better country, that man is a dissatisfied man, there is un- 

 rest in his soul and he will not be a progressive farmer ; but if he is recon- 

 ciled to his place and believes in the possibility of his farm, he will proceed 

 to improve his farm, improve the conditiofis around him and take heart. 



